ke the high moral ground that the
father of her children must be great and good. Instead of your
present laws, which make the mother and her children the victims
of vice and license, you might rather pass laws prohibiting to
all drunkards, libertines, and fools, the rights of husbands and
fathers. Do not the hundreds of laughing idiots that are crowding
into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our statesmen for some
new laws on marriage--to the mothers of this day for a higher,
purer morality?

Again, as the condition of the child always follows that of the
mother, and as by the sanction of your laws the father may beat
the mother, so may he the child. What mother can not bear me
witness to untold sufferings which cruel, vindictive fathers have
visited upon their helpless children? Who ever saw a human being
that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and ignoble must that
man be who, let the provocation be what it may, would strike a
woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling child is unworthy
the name of man. A mother's love can be no protection to a child;
she can not appeal to you to save it from a father's cruelty, for
the laws take no cognizance of the mother's most grievous wrongs.
Neither at home nor abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at
the temptations that surround the paths of our youth at every
step; look at the gambling and drinking saloons, the club rooms,
the dens of infamy and abomination that infest all our villages
and cities--slowly but surely sapping the very foundations of all
virtue and strength.

By your laws, all these abominable resorts are permitted. It is
folly to talk of a mother moulding the character of her son, when
all mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment, conspire to
destroy her influence. But when woman's moral power shall speak
through the ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and
felt; then, in our legislative debates, such questions as the
canal tolls on salt, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and
the claims of Mr. Smith for damages against the State, would be
secondary to the consideration of the legal existence of all
these public resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive
indulgence and destruction.

Many times and oft it has been asked us, with, unaffected